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By Jason Bourgeois
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Grey Matters. Actually, not quite that, but slightly less silly. I'm still staying away from DC for the most part, and rather than jump back into Marvel, I wanted to continue my look at Top Cow this month. I bailed on Witchblade with the creative team change after 150 not doing much for me, but Ron Marz continues to do good work on the books he still does. I already talked about Magdalena, and this time out, I wanted to see what's going on with Artifacts.
Artifacts started a few years ago, and was originally a 13 issue maxiseries that was pretty much going to serve as the culmination of everything Ron Marz had been setting up over his run on Witchblade. On top of all that, it promised to bring together every Top Cow property into one, single, cohesive universe, and have them beat each other up while the universe crashed and burned behind them.
I like the idea behind this book. Top Cow has a lengthy history almost 20 years old, and they have had various titles and concepts from androids to magical artifacts, to cyborg hit squads, and others. The task of bringing all these ideas together into a whole was intriguing, and daunting. Part of the joy of any comicbook universe is that they are exactly that; a universe. See the success of the Marvel movies, and how those disparate ideas such as gods and men with armour and gamma irradiated rage monsters have come together so well, all with the thanks of SHIELD and Nick Fury. Trying to do that with Top Cow sounded like fun, and would make it more than just "Witchblade and friends".
The thrust of this title takes its cue from Witchblade, naturally. It's the biggest seller, the longest running, and has the richest mythology. They have established the existence of 13 artifacts of mystical power, and hinted that bringing all 13 together would be Very Bad Indeed. So of course, that's what happens in Artifacts, at long last. This is what helps bring in various characters, while others are brought in to just try and contain the chaos or be along for the ride.
Where the book hit its downfall is three-fold. One, was that with a 13 issue title, and so many characters, it did become a bit of a very long fight scene for much of the middle issues. The book started off strong, and it had a decent finish, but that middle section was a chore to slog through. And this was not helped by the second factor of having some artists that...I hesitate to call them bad. It's more like they were rushed, and we got many two page spreads that were a mess of fighting. The narrative fell apart and was hard to follow thanks to some of the art.
And the third thing was the release of the book. Like any title, they were shooting for monthly, but promptly failed miserably. Part of that again falls to the art, I suspect, as deadlines were missed, and new art had to be done, and rushed. So you got an incoherent mess, several months after the last issue, when you'd have forgotten what last happened. The book just totally fell apart, until the end when things stopped being all fighty, and the plot resumed.
This all makes it very hard to recommend what should have been the Top Cow magnum opus. Which is a shame, because the ideas are there, but I think the production could not live up to the big ideas.
But that's the miniseries. Once it ended with issue #13, a month later came Artifacts #14. Whaaat? Yes, they decided to continue their literally universe-shaking series. Fortunately, this title decided to become way more focused when it became an ongoing title about the titular artifacts and their bearers.
At the end of the 13-issue storyline, the Top Cow universe received a slight reboot, directed by the hands of some of their characters. Almost everything is the same, but there are some major differences, and some people who know things are wrong. So far, the opening storyline has been about exploring the changes, showing what is different, and having people trying to piece things together.
The book continues to be by Ron Marz, back on form after the original storyline, and reuniting with his long-time Witchblade collaborator, Stjepan Sejic, whose computer painted art continues to be gorgeous. I wish he had done Artifacts from the start.
Using the title to explore this new world, at once setting things up and not shying away from how different things are, has made for an interesting read. Marz took two of the more intriguing characters from the first Artifacts storyline, and using them as our explorers of the new universe, and discovering that even the already corrupted can be corrupted by ultimate power.
The opening maxiseries was a bit of a let down with some good moments, but I am glad I stuck around for the ongoing series, since it has corrected almost every flaw I found in the epic crossover, and in some ways made it worth having read, since the new stories are built upon the first. An easy recommendation for fans of Top Cow, and it might work for new fans, since the book is taking your hand and showing you things in a new light.
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